Second-grade math textbooks are filled with illustrations to help students make a connection between groups of objects and their numerical representations. One of the fundamental skills for all mathematics learning is a firm understanding of the place value system, which is crucial for understanding the complex processes students will encounter in later grades. For most kids, place value is part of the second-grade curriculum. Students will learn to read and order numbers through the hundreds place, such as
356, or "3 hundreds, 5 tens, and 6 ones." With this knowledge in hand, most students by the end of the year will be adding and subtracting three-digit numbers. Second-graders will also work with "fact families," taking, say,
3,
4, and
7, and writing the addition and subtraction equations that can be built from them – "3 + 4 = 7," "7 - 4 = 3," "4 + 3 = 7," and "7 - 3 = 4." And they will learn to count money, a truly practical application of their growing skills.
Does Everyday Math Work for Every Child? Schools have tried a variety of math programs over the years, seeking the one that will best increase student performance, particularly on standardized tests. One of today's most popular programs is McGraw-Hill's
Everyday Math series of textbooks. The series' approach has been nicknamed "Chicago Math," because its key ideas were developed at the University of Chicago.
Everyday Math introduces new concepts in brief units, then "spirals" back to them for review throughout the year. It also emphasizes real-world applications for math skills — asking students, for example, to find prices in supermarket advertisements and using them to calculate the cost of a shopping trip. Some school districts credit
Everyday Math with improving standardized-test scores, but it has many critics as well: It does not teach students traditional computation methods or demand that they memorize addition and subtraction facts. It also omits traditional lessons such as division by fractions and longhand division. In some schools using the textbooks, teachers supplement their lessons with traditional addition and subtraction drills.
• Second-graders may still be calculating relatively small numbers, but soon enough, they will be working with radically larger sums. Mitsumasa Anno's
Anno's Mysterious Multiplying Jar (Putnam, 1999) uses words and pictures to show young children the magic of rapidly expanding numbers.
• If your grandchildren love working with numbers, or if they need some extra help with addition and subtraction, keep a workbook on hand for their visits.
Scholastic Success With Math Workbook - Grade 2 (Scholastic, 2002) reinforces essential math skills with puzzles, games, and practice pages kids can complete independently.
Math Is War. Help your grandchildren practice comparing number values by playing the classic game of War. Divide a standard deck of cards into even piles and keep the piles facedown. At each turn, each player turns over his or her top card. Whoever has the highest card takes the other cards. (Decide before the game if aces will be high or low.) In case of a tie, go to War: Each player plays one face-down card and then one face-up card. The highest face-up card takes all the rest. The player who has all the cards at the end of the game is the winner. (Or, since War can take a while, you can set a time limit for each game and declare a winner when you reach the limit.)
Everybody Uses Math. While you’re out in the neighborhood with your grandchildren, ask them to identify people who are using math and how — for example, a waiter, a carpenter, or a tailor. As you find more people using math skills, you can reinforce for grandchildren the importance of math lessons for their futures.
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